The subject of my profile is Daniel Rodriguez. He works at Hillsdale High School in three different jobs: assistant dean, teacher, and coach. In each of these jobs, Daniel looks for opportunities to help students who are not reaching their full potential for one reason or another. As the assistant dean, Daniel is in charge of keeping track of student attendance. He tries to help kids who have many absences by getting to the root of what is causing them to miss school. In his second job, he teaches students whose first language isn’t English in a special program called ELD. He seeks to create a small community of kids who help each other learn the language and also succeed in school. His third job is coaching three after school sports, soccer, baseball, and cross-country. His goal is to give his players a competitive mentality while learning life lessons that can be applied outside of the game. Daniel himself was once a student at Hillsdale High School and had his own challenges at that time. He wanted to return to Hillsdale to give back to a community that once helped him.

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My original plan was to pose Daniel standing with his arms crossed. I thought this would capture his take-charge personality. We tried that a couple of times, but he looked uncomfortable in all of the shots. So I decided I would photograph him doing something where he was not focused on the camera and how he was holding his face. For him, that was coaching his cross-country team. I took many shots of him teaching and encouraging his kids, but it was a challenge to get good light. The sun was setting and the field where the team was practicing was surrounded by hills and humongous trees. They cast shadows on Daniel as he moved. I recognized that there is a tradeoff between a posed portrait and the more natural motion shot. It would have been easier to get the correct exposure in a posed shot, but it was unnatural. The motion shot was more natural, but presented serious lighting challenges. I chose the motion shot to show Daniel in a relaxed and natural way. Because I shot in camera RAW, I was able to go back and correct some of the overexposure in Photoshop. In the end, I am satisfied with my final portrait because I know it will make Daniel proud and surprised.